jacib

Religious Studies, but Religion is one of the main issues I'm looking at. I got a B+ in my one undergrad sociology class. I took a few other classes in the Social Sciences though, and did well. A few of programs mention that they consider a "Social Sciences" background a plus. I found none that emphasized a sociology background in particular. My father is a professor and half of his program's applicants had a non-Sociology background, and half of the acceptances did too (though he hasn't served on the adcomm for years--he hated it)

A lot, because they are the people who are going to be actual hiring you.

I think "are the norm" gives a good idea of the process. I'd imagine Anthro admission to be pretty similar to sociology admission. The top ten programs all had 1400+ averages, I'd guess the top twenty, maybe top thirty usually had 600+ on each section (quant is more important to sociology so that might matter). I know this because my father is a professor and emailed all his colleagues. That's what they told him. They were being honest. One private school in the top 20 was known for placing particular importance on the GRE's (a few of the other programs mentioned it specifically "while we don't put too much weight on them, a place like Elite Private University does."), but even at that place, one of my father's close friends wrote students normally have at least 620-30 in each; students with around 620-30 often decide to retake for admission. One low score won't kill you, but if there are two there needs to be something really extraordinary in the application. That said, they did accept someone with scores below 620 who had written an award winning BA thesis. This was clearly an exceptional case, but it shows they do at least look at those apps. So numbers can hurt you, but you definitely can make yourself stand out... it's just difficult. My point is, you both can be right. They are the "normal range" of students, but a few really exceptional students who test poorly might be able to push their way to the top despite test scores. It's not a hard cap like in law school.

That's so weird! I don't have time to find it now, but many schools other schools besides Duke publish all their numbers. University of Minnesota and Northwestern I know do for sure. Here's University of Minnesota Twin Cities Anthro and here's Northwestern's anthro program... though now I realize Northwestern doesn't give scores, only # applied, # accepted. For other non-anthro kids lurking, you can find more Northwestern info here, more Minnesota info here. This again from Minnesota is something I hadn't seen before but is really interesting. It's the "Program Management Survey Responses". I would guess those numbers, especially places that offer year by year, are probably accurate... though what Dubya just said is unnerving for the whole process in general. Can you tell us more? Were you applying to a particularly competitive subfield?

Post it here. I have seen a lot of really good useful advice from people there. Or if you want just post the first paragraph because that seems to be what you're most concerned about. A lot of people do that if they don't feel comfortable posting everything.

Man, from a cursory glance, I can say that I should have applied to Washington! It wouldn't have been a perfect fit for me, but Susan Pitchford, Daniel Chirot, and Michael Hechter all seem interesting (especially the last two, though I guess the comparative/nationalism stuff draws me to the program as much as the religion)... and I didn't even check out the other schools you mentioned. Hopefully, I won't have to next year, if you know what I mean. I'm happy with where I applied.

Yo if you want some Turkish hip hop, check out Cartel ("Old School" Turkish Hip Hop) and then peep Ceza and Sagopa, who used to work together and are now "beefing" (think Tupac and Biggie). If you're interested, Elif Cinar wrote a really interesting piece on how the Ultranationalists adopted Cartel as one of their own, but Cartel was more ambivalent because of their own immigrant experience (in Germany); many of their songs are against the racism in Germany, and I think they were quite shocked when the Ultranationalists courted them. The song "Cartel" has a verse in English (which unabashedly bites from a Cyprus Hill verse), and a few other songs have verses in German if you happen to know that. Most Turkish rappers spent time in Germany (in fact, a disproportionate number of Turkish pop stars spent time in Germany). One of the religious political parties during the last election wanted to use the Ceza song "Fark var" ["There's a difference"] as their official campaign song, but Ceza declined, saying that other parties he liked more had also asked and he didn't want to get mixed up with politics. "Fark var" was that party's campaign slogan; it was trying to differentiate itself from the other religious party (imagine a Pat Buchanan-type party railing against the Republicans for being sell outs on Christian values, as a comparison). Yeah I absolutely am not arguing with that idea that superior test scores are a must to be looked at. I think you still think, based on all the evidence I've seen, exaggerated the hardness of the 700 cutoff, you've been giving it at as an end-all, be-all number, which it's not. Yes a place like Harvard or Chicago likely wants very high numbers, but I think most apps above 1300 are at least looked at. This is a personal suspicion. Which schools are you claiming have a cutoff? I think most people agree that Duke is a top five program (forgive me, I am rather ignorant on the more sectarian side of study, but it's a top program, correct?) and the average last year was about 1420, and lower in other years. I'd argue that to be a strong candidate one should get around 700, but I will argue against any kind of 700 or bust system that's labeled as fact and not rumor (I could absolutely believe the rumors... I'm just talking about how the information is presented). I might believe "under 700 and you should have something important that we want" for one of the top five or so programs. Considering that it breaks down by subfield, each group is only looking at a manageable number of applicants. One of the old posts said U of C got 15-20 applicants in Philosophy of Religion. I think that's a number where they can be expected to physically look at all of the apps. New Testament probably has more applicants, let's say if they had double that number, it would be harder (but not impossible) for two or three committee members to look at all of applications individually. That said, some probably eliminate themselves right away (no MA for example, GPA's below 3.0). I don't think a 670v and 770q get's you eliminated, but it doesn't get you noticed either. However, when you have 40+ applicants for two or fewer spots, it's hard to get noticed anyhow. My second point is that there are different levels of competition, I'd guess those Theology degrees and NT degrees are the most competitive and therefore the most arbitrary, but I doubt saying there is a program-wide 700+ limit in place is in correct. Totally guesstimating, I'd wager the number of OT, Jewish Studies, Philosophy of Religion at a place like Chicago would be comparable. I would guess the non-Judeo-Christian religions/interdisciplinary programs have fewer applicants. I'd also guess that for certain things, such as the African-American religious experience, programs have certain faculty who focus on it, and therefore, they have a certain number of spots set aside for it (one a year, one every two years, perhaps). I think we agree overall that GRE's are important, and that the demands are very, very high, but I questioning your idea that there is a certain number of programs with a 700 cap. Which two programs do you say have "true caps"? Duke and Vanderbilt? I think a look at Duke's numbers disproves that... unless you meant only in NT or PR (PR=Philosophy of Religion, right?), which I might believe, but I still want to know how you know it. It's something I had never heard before. You said: Vanderbilt has a hard cap at 700, Duke's is even higher at 720-730. I suspect Chicago has one, but I was never able to determine where it fell. Most of the 12 schools I applied to last year did not have hard caps. How do you know that set of information specifical? Suspect Chicago has one, okay I can buy that. I suspect they do too. I also expect that it would be rare for Chicago to admit a candidate who scores under 700 to be let into a program with 40+ applicants. But you state the rest of the information as fact. How do you know those facts? Especially because I think a look at Duke's numbers refutes one of your facts, and while it doesn't automatically disprove all of them, it does put some onus on you to establish how you "know" these things. Which you still haven't dealt with. I have tried to put all the information I could find out there in a clear, public way, including (as you noted) the information that doesn't exactly support my original thesis.

I think he meant something along the lines of "bored at work" and not "bored with my relationship".

I generally stuck to the 2 or 3 pages guidelines... and actually tried to keep it very close to exactly 2 pages (i.e. not going on to the third page)

Yeah Social Strat will do you well! I went in saying "Religion, Religion, Religion" and my dad looked at my statement and was basically like "You need to add other subfields too..." He told me that they recently hired a Sociologist of Religion in his department, and though that's her main research interest, they could only hire her cause she could teach the methods classes and perhaps some sociology of culture (where they were weak I guess). She could also teach something else--exactly what I forget. Social networks? I hard that's going to be hot soon. Man, I wish religion were about to blow up! But I feel like it's one of those things that people are always saying. Especially about some breakthrough between religion and science. Hey remember how in the 70's the world was going to be totally secularized by now? I found it really hard to do find someone to supervise my project! Are you finding the same thing? Granted, I started my Sociology Department search late, but all that people could suggest was the same four departments over and over (I ended up applying to a fifth and reworking my statement to be much more political sociology). But since we need sociology of religion + _______ (insert other thing here), I had a hard time finding a department with good religion and good politics! Anyway, email the DGSs at place you want to go and ask if they happen to know the average GRE scores, and what kind of score the "typical candidate" has. Tell them your scores and that you're concerned, because otherwise you're a strong candidate. They'll probably tell you if you need to retake. Maybe wait a month or two until they're done with the current batch.

I'd add that there is a good thing called How To Get Accepted to a PhD Program in Religion/Theology: The Series. Particularly check out section 2.2.b GRE (you have to scroll down to subsubsection . I'd say the quote I'd like to highlight is: No school will admit to a "hard and fast" cut-off score (either cumulative or each section individually), so it does little help to ask a professor if you are OK with a particular score.That being said, most of the perennially popular schools (i.e. Duke, Yale, Chicago) are rumored to cast aside applications below 1400 without ever reading beyond the GRE scores simply to pare down the sheer number of applicants in one fell swoop. Further he seems to imply that the individual sections are what I'd call a "soft cap", but your 700 benchmark seems accurate, PhdWannabe. When it comes to the Verbal, most doctoral applicants will be scoring at or above 700. If you hit a 680 or 670, I would not despair. But if you are sitting on a 620 or 630 I would highly recommend trying to boost it up a little higher. By and large, a 700 seems to be the benchmark for Verbal scoring. As for the Quantitative, the point is simply to not bomb it. somewhere in the 600's will usually suffice.

Haha dude there's no polarization, just me and you. I'm just curious where you're getting your info is all. I looked on the official results page, nothing about GRE scores. From what I can tell, most things you said about the way the GRE is given was wrong, though I'm not totally sure I'm right on everything either. I agree a sub 700 score is a weak point on a religion application for top programs, but I don't think it's a breaking point. I am currently looking through the forums for anything that confirms what you said, and I'm not seeing it. The closest I've found is one kid claims you need a 1500+... which again as we've seen from the averages is not true. Then I found the there was very little info about the GRE's but someone with a got into The numbers are usually presented as a total (i.e. not "over 700 in verbal" but rather "over 1400") when people talk about them is one thing I've definitely noticed... I should remind you, ... though this student eventually got into One further note: a competitive program like Islamic Studies might have a different standard of GRE scores than a very competitive program like Old Testament which might have a different standard from the ubercompetitive spots, like the theology things and New Testament. It seems like most of the PhDs on this site are applying to those. Oh someone gave their .02 about 1200. Someone else mentioned that one needs a 1400 on the GRE (but read the next few posts to see why that's weird and perhaps a one student thing). Some said wanted a minimum 1200. So again, I think you're exaggerating the minimum GRE requirements, the weight of the individual sections vs. total score, and the importance of the GRE in general, but I'm totally willing to reevaluate. I haven't read the

Yeah I forgot to mention that: be extra careful on the first couple of questions, and also of the first 2 or 3 questions of any "type".

I work for one of those pay services. I do test prep, but my other people at my work definitely help students craft their essays (and yes, I do mean help rather than do it for them). Granted this is in a foreign country where people don't know the system. Universities in this country don't want essays--everything is numbers based. I do think we help the students a lot. We find matches and helping them research schools (what foreign kid knows that Lehigh is good at business?). Telling them what is appropriate to write in their statements, if they're aiming too high/low, how to get their art portfolios done, navigating all the testing, finding all the info on the websites, etc. I think we make a big positive difference for most of these kids. But they do also drop ridiculously fat wads of money. Most importantly, my students are not whiners, they are not spoiled kids, they are self starters, etc. even though they pay for academic counseling. Well, they are all spoiled rotten by their parents, but they don't act like it. Err most of them don't. I make no claims about the OP, but I feel obliged to defend my kids. Even though half of them have drivers, they're almost all really really sweet and down to earth. Like honestly, dealing with these kids is the best part of my day. I don't mind working 7 days a week. They're really appreciative and for the most part are very willful that they are reflected in their work. (I remember one of my students saying, "Will you take a look at something for me? [Your boss] wants to end it with this volcano metaphor, but isn't that really cheesy?" I ended up helping her just because I liked her as a kid and she was really appreciative, not for the freeness but for the help... her parents totally would have paid whatever I asked). I just want to say that going to a consultant does not automatically make you lazy or a jackass or ready to copy your way to the top.

I don't think the OP sounds like someone who is looking for a handout or someone to do all the work, s/he just sounds like someone who doesn't know where to start. I did choose to start with an anecdote. For two different types of programs, I actually had two different ones. For Religion, I talked about the first time i encountered religious theory, which lead into a talk about how my non-religious upbringing, which led directly to what I'm doing now (and how it relates to what I want to study), which led directly to what I want to do in grad school which led directly directly to some of my ideas about that topic which led directly to why this program is a good fit for me. For Sociology, it was the same, except I started talking about my father (who is a sociologist) and how I wanted to avoid his work and that's why I didn't take any Sociology classes until my last year of university, which led into what I'm doing now, etc. No sob stories. Talk about something you've seen that's an egregious waste of resources and how economics could fix that. How your economics training affects what you see. Even an I knew I was supposed to be an economist when... moment. My fake little sister is in econ and is applying to a competitive internship right now and is writing about how she hates most non-profit work because they allocate resources so poorly in her experience. She has no plan to solve world hunger. Just any ah-hah moment you had when it's like "Oh yeah my training totally makes me think differently from the rest of these idiots... but like you people on the adcomm!" You know, like getting into an argument about how voting is a waste of resources or something.

Yeah dude, I agree with you, those things will all make your application much stronger than mine... provided you make the initial cut. I'd really recommend retaking the exam and studying, if you have time. If you don't have time, I'd recommend making time, honestly. It sounds like you're prepared and would make an excellent sociologist, so it would be horrible for them not to give your application a proper look. Start learning words. Get the official ETS book full of tons of old paper test questions. Make dumb flash cards. Use Barron's (it's particularly long and difficult) word list. Organize the words into groups so that slander-libel-calumniate etc. all have the same meaning your head, and that this meaning has an antonym in laud-extol-panegyrize. Study like a nerd. Every time you see an unknown word, look it up, make a flash card for it. Relearn triangles. Take so many practice tests in a silent control envirnoments that you go crazy. Study what you get wrong. Learn when to guess the word you don't know. Learn to eliminate choices well. Learn what ETS thinks is the main idea of a passage. Your school probably has GRE prep books in its library or study center, get ones with CDs and copy the CDs and take the electronic tests in addition to the official ETS book. I studied actively for about two months and the last two weeks I just didn't do anything but study. I woke up at 7 every day to get my body adjusted I improved my score by more than 100 points. Probably closer to 150. 1200, a 150 point improvement for you, is enough to get you passed probably any arbitrary cut off. Where are you looking at specifically? I had a big problem finding people who study religion. I ended up with five schools, but finding five programs that were a decent fit, but no one could suggest schools beyond those four (the fifth I actually emphasized the political aspects of the project). It's a really not in demand subfield, especially in terms of hiring. The advice I got was if you do study sociology of religion, make sure you pass qualifiers in another subfield too (like political sociology, urban sociology, comparative/historical sociology, methods, theory, whatever) so that you can better present yourself as someone prepared to teach a variety of undergrad classes.

Are both your sections roughly equal? My old man is a professor and emailed a bunch of his colleagues (at schools I'm not applying to) and got their takes on the GRE. It seems a low score in one section is not the end of the world. More quantitative programs (especially ones with a big demography element) tend to want higher scores. Private schools seem to emphasize scores more than public ones (I posted some of the exact things they sent my father in a few other places so I won't waste space reposting them). Some schools are known for emphasizing the score more than others: one school in particular was brought up twice. However, even at that private top 25 school, the guy who emailed my father (he's actually a close friend of my father's--they bunk together at conferences, how cute is that!) told him that though they generally want scores higher than 620-630, they do make exceptions if there is something else outstanding. For example, they accepted a girl with lower scores who won some award for her undergrad thesis. A 4.0 Master's grad would hopefully be that kind of outstanding thing for some schools at least. You just need one school to take a close look at you, luckily. If not, study harder. Take lots of practice tests. Try to get feedback if it was just your score that killed you. Three times smacks of commitment. Especially if you already have an MA showing high level work. I would guess with enough studying you can improve dramatically. If you're starting to get a bunch of rejections, PM me and I'll give you a bunch of study strategies (I tutor SAT/TOEFL/GRE/GMAT right now). It'll send me an email and I'll try to get back to you even if I've generally stopped using the boards in general.

I don't think hard caps exist the way PhdWannabe describes. I have heard people say that some schools have a 1200 cap, which I can buy. No one knows exactly how the schools use the GRE, some use them only as a minimum standard. Some use them throughout the entire process. In some fields (I don't think religion) they are mainly used to determine funding after all else, or as a tie breaker. It depends on schools. I think there is good evidence that in Religion scores, both quantative and verbal, are taken very seriously and a raising your score will help your profile. However, I don't think it is absolutely necessary. Your score would probably be on the lower end of Duke's average (i keep citing them because they have all the best public data) for verbal and obviously 770 is on the higher end of quantitative. How that matters to adcomms is mostly speculative. If you think you can do better, do better. It will help. But don't let anyone scare you unnecessarily.

Where on earth are you getting your information? How do you know which schools do and don't cap, if you the schools won't admit to doing it? I don't mean to start a fight or argue unnecessarily, but I believe you're mistaken about several things. First of all, it's mathematically impossible that, assuming their published numbers are honest, Duke has a 720-730 cap. 720 is their AVERAGE score for a roughly AVERAGE year. Some years' averages were considerably lower than the supposed cap. If they had any sort of cap, one would assume that it'd be at least 50 points lower than their average. Probably more. I'm not saying that they don't have a cap of some kid, I'm just guessing its more of a "below 650 and you've really, really got to impress me" kind of thing than a "we throw out all numbers below 700". But even if the former is what you meant, considering the average scores, 700 still seems too high for that kind of soft cap. I suspect applications at all or most of these highly competitive programs do go through a number based pre-sort, but I don't presume to know what that entails. Second, raw scores (number of right and wrong) mean nothing on an adaptive tests because questions are not weighted equally. Also no one actually knows their raw score because it's immediately converted to an official, scaled score. Minor point. More important point: The scaling is meant to render a consistent score. However, there is that there is no reason to assume a consistent pool of GRE test takers. In fact, there are strong reasons to assume it varies considerably from year to year, in addition to following certain larger trends. The percentage of foreign test takers, for one, makes a large difference in scores, and since foreigners are less well-funded as a group, they are more or less likely to apply to grad school based on economic realities, among other factors. Further, there is probably a long-term trend of more foreign students applying to graduate school as well as the shorter term variations based on economic cycles. Secondly, very specifically, more economics and finance programs are accepting, or even in some cases requiring, the GRE, bringing in a whole new pool of applicants where before these programs only allowed the GMAT. Generally these programs are very competative so one can assume they bring a new type of very high scoring applicant to the GRE. Thirdly, if there is an externality which encourages more, say, engineers to apply to school and fewer humanities majors, this will also have major effects on the pool. Finally, if people start preparing more, that will obviously also change the outcomes of the pool independent of changing its composition of taker. This all doesn't even touch on the possibility about changing numbers of people considering grad school, and occasional use of the GRE for a purpose other than graduate school. Some people on this board have actually reported changes in their percentiles between the report they got last and when they checked again this year: notice the changes are small, generally (except the writing section which, because there are so few possible scores and therefore has much lower precision*, can have much greater swings), indicating that yes because of the size of the pool, it is relatively difficult to change its composition quickly. I believe someone mentioned a 4 percentile move on their writing score, and a 1 percentile move after ETS's latest recalibration. GRE scores are absolutely meant to have an absolute meaning, not one relative to all the test takers at a certain time. The GRE went through great pains to assure that the new computer adaptive scores meant the same thing as the old scores (as opposed to a test like the TOEFL, where every change of delivery system meant a new scoring system). The "on your certain exam" is also irreleveant because it's a computer adaptive test... very few people got the exact same questions as you. Further, I don't think they ever completely redo all the questions at the same time, but rather I believe they cycle questions in and out so two tests a few weeks apart might draw from a similar pool of questions, but let's say x% would be new and y% of the old ones would have been removed. I could be wrong about this. However, anyway, there is no way to really develop a percentile of everyone who took "your test". The real score/observed score thing is their admission that they don't perfectly test your ability, and there is a margin of era. Remember your SAT score when you applied to undergrad also implied that your "real score" was somewhere within a range of about 60 points or something. *Not to be confused with accuracy.

Damn.

Really? Oh. I am a shameful American who foolishly assumed that our neighbors to the North shared our system. Ignore that... I just figured because there's so much cross border applying that the two systems HAD to be aligned, especially since the job market between the two is relatively fluid. And a lot of (some?) academic societies are cross border. I apologize. In my field, the University of Toronto was one of the few grad schools I saw at elite programs, and I was just reading an article by a guy from Western Ontario or something who ended up teaching in Iowa.... I am willing to further admit that I don't actually know how fluid the job market it is, I was thinking of these few examples.

To the best of my knowledge, the above is incorrect. Peep page ten on of this ETS report, especially the chart on page 13. The percentile is adjusted periodically. That's the part that varies. Your 770 will always be a 770, it is the percentile for ALL 770 that EVER (ever meaning in the last five years) took the test that will change. The percentile varies (small amounts generally), but this variations reflects changes in the ability of the tested pool, not of changes in the relative difficulty of the test. Everyone who got a 770 will have the same percentile because all 770 performed to the same level of competence. As for 700 cut off, I am not sure this true. I doubt any program has a "hard cap" at 700. At least one political science programs advertize their typical student has a 700+ in both sections, but they do not list this as requirement. They likely have a soft cap at 700, however. The only real hard caps that I have heard of consistently are of 1000 and 1200. I have no heard of individual hard caps for either score, generally just the total score. It is absolutely a good idea to email professors (maybe not this month but next month...), particularly the director of the graduate program, and say these are my scores, would you recommend retesting? Everyone gave me really honest answers to my questions. One applicant definitely wrote on here how even a semester of German made him a stronger applicant (a professor told him). Also PhDwannabe, is histrionic a typo or an incredibly clever irreverent pun?

http://www.cgsnet.org/?tabid=201 is the summary http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/CGS_Resolution.pdf is the full text plus a list of signing schools The document is only binding to American schools which have signed. Canadian schools all follow this as well as a rule, though I don't think they have any binding contract like this. I don't know if British schools follow this as a rule, but I think they'll be understanding of the situation and almost certainly grant the extension. If ıt makes you feel more comfortable, make it about money, say while you would really love to attend this school, you need to see offers because graduate school is so expensive. I am guessing this school is a British school that has "rolling admissions" and they just want to know when they can accept others students, so if you do get into a better school, you should tell this school you're not coming as soon as possible so they can accept another kid.

I tend to see discipline as a method. There is a sociological method, a historical method, etc. There is also a body of theory that address these fields in general even if there is less clear of a method: while calling "close reading" the "literary method" might be pushing it, there is certainly a distinct body of theory meant to be applied in the discipline. The interdisciplinary programs are defined by their lack of method and the limitlessness of their theory. They are fields rather than disciplines. There is no Middle Eastern Studies method, there is no Middle Eastern Studies theory. While there is Feminist Theory and Queer Theory, it is not meant to be applied to the discipline, but rather, it is meant to be applied to every discipline. Feminist theory is designed to engage a broad range of topics in both the Social Sciences and the Humanities. For this reason, Religion always seemed to me an interdisciplinary program and indeed, at my school it was treated as such. I took as many classes with social scientists as I did with people who pored over ancient texts in dead languages. Of the nine people who graduated in my program, two projects were clearly sociological, two clearly historical, one a mix of history and philosophy, two could have been in classics, and one was Biblical, then there was me, overseen by a scholar of William Blake who could have been in the English department. Sadly, my graduate schools search has taught me that most of the time, it's not the case, and it's much more like Tomoko Masuzawa describes in the wonderful book The Invention of World Religions: People study saints or the Bible, or people study a pagan equivalent of saints or the Bible. I realized that, other than J. Z. Smith and Mircea Eliade, and some critics like Masuzawa, all the theory I found interesting came from the Social Sciences (mainly Anthropology and Sociology). Anyway, grad school has made me sick to death of departments. I need to become superfamous enough to start nabbing joint appointments. This is my take on methods and fields today, we'll see if I still agree tomorrow.

I was told to put down similar institutions, meaning especially similarity in program structure, rather than just ranking. You don't need to list any, or all of them, but my ten schools split nicely into two categories, (all about equally ranked) so I put five on for each app that asked.